Elon Musk goes back and says he “killed” new official seal for Twitter accounts

A new checkmark meant to better identify prominent Twitter accounts has become the latest source of chaos at the company under new owner Elon Musk.

Within hours of the feature’s debut, Musk said abruptly on Wednesday that he had “killed” a new gray verification seal designed to label government accounts, big brands and media outlets, adding to the turmoil at one of the companies. most influential social media platforms in the world.

The new seal, which consisted of a gray checkmark and the word “Official” placed under the identifiers of accounts belonging to Twitter, the United Nations and media outlets such as CNN was presented for the first time on Tuesday night (8).

The feature was created to differentiate “selected” accounts with identity verification from the blue checkmarks that Twitter said it will soon offer paying users for $8 a month, tweeted Esther Crawford, the company’s director of product management.

The new emblem began rolling out on Wednesday morning. But late in the morning, users began to notice that the emblem was gone.

“Just killed,” Musk tweeted in response to a tweet about the disappearances. Musk added: “Note that Twitter will be doing a lot of stupid things over the next few months. Let’s keep what works and change what doesn’t.”

Minutes later, however, Crawford was forced to clarify what Musk meant.

“The official seal is still coming out as part of the @TwitterBlue launch – we’re just focusing on government and commercial entities to begin with,” Crawford tweeted. “What you saw him mention was the fact that we’re not focusing on giving individuals the ‘Official’ label right now.”

Despite this, accounts like NASA, CNN and UN were all stripped of their “official” labels on Wednesday afternoon, fueling confusion.

The real-time experiment highlights Musk’s makeshift management style, which he applied liberally across the company in his first few weeks of ownership.

In recent days, Twitter and Musk have been met with widespread criticism over the company’s plan to change the meaning of the blue checkmark from identifying confirmed individuals, primarily public figures, to a new meaning meaning a user has paid for Twitter Blue, company subscription service.

Election security experts have warned that bad actors are likely to be able to pay for a blue checkmark and then change their display names to impersonate government officials or other authoritative sources of information.

After appearing to be ready to roll out the feature over the weekend, Twitter decided to delay the rollout until after the midterm, the company said. CNN previously.

Also over the weekend, Musk promised that accounts caught engaging in undisclosed impersonation would be permanently banned without notice, reversing earlier promises that so-called “permabans” would be extremely rare.

Twitter said on Tuesday night that to resolve the ambiguity over which accounts on its platform were verified — as opposed to those that simply pay $8 a month for a blue checkmark on their profiles — the company would introduce the brand. gray selection as part of an “official” label.

An earlier screenshot posted by Crawford showed how the new label would look. The screenshot displayed the Twitter account’s own profile, which included the default blue checkmark next to its display name, as well as a gray checkmark and the word “Official” below the account identifier.

“Not all previously verified accounts will be labeled ‘Official’ and the label is not available for purchase,” Crawford tweeted Tuesday. “Accounts that will receive it include government accounts, commercial companies, business partners, major media outlets, publishers and some public figures.”

Crawford also confirmed that the upcoming option to pay for a blue checkmark will not include an ID verification requirement.

“We will continue to experiment with ways to differentiate between account types,” Crawford said.